Energy consumption of business processes has become an important economical factor during the last couple of years. This is also true for the operation of computing centers. An ongoing dynamic information technology infrastructure comprising virtual resources, software as a service, and other components allows reassigning resources dynamically to different consumers. Within such environments, economical processes such as billing have a need to measure, control, and account any type of costs on a fine granular basis to be able to clearly define the corresponding costs of each consumer.
Previous strategies to minimize energy consumption within computer centers focused on technical systems having a reduced overall energy consumption e.g. via improved solid-state technology or variable clock rates, and on re-using heat that was previously wasted.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,367,023 to Kling et al. describes a system including a power supply, a meter coupled to the power supply measuring e.g. current or voltage between the power supply and some parts of the computer system, and a controller. Measurements from the meter are used by the controller to determine if the power consumed by that part of the computer system reaches a threshold to send in case a throttle signal.
Similarly, a power management system is disclosed in U.S. Patent Publication No. 2004/0128564 to Dubinsky enabling granular management of power consuming accessories like a microprocessor, a disk drive, an I/O port and/or a chip within an individual compute component. Accordingly, the power management system allows for several states of operation of an individual component within a multiple compute component system allowing to operation of the individual components between several states.
The prior art provides one or more coarse solutions to address energy consumption. Accordingly, there is a need for a solution that provides granular management with respect to energy consumption in a computing environment.